Blog

Last night at our weekly CNCF Bible Study, we took a break from focusing as much on the content of our prayers, and we looked at some practical resources we can use as tools to discipline ourselves in the spiritual discipline of prayer.

Books

I've found that few things stir in me a desire to pray than reading good books by faithful men of the past and present. Aside from Scripture, here are some good ones:

Easy Reading Level

A Call to Prayer, by J. C. Ryle

Psalms: The Prayerbook of the Bible, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

A Hunger for God, by John Piper

Intermediate Reading Level

A Praying Life, by Paul Miller

War Psalms of the Prince of Peace, by James Adams

A Call to Spiritual Reformation, by D. A. Carson

Prayer, by John Bunyan (a one-volume edition of Praying in the Spirit and The Throne of Grace, published by Banner of Truth)

Sermons on Prayer, by Charles Spurgeon

Advanced Reading Level

The Complete Works of E. M. Bounds

Communion with God, by John Owen

Resources for Devotion

All of the above books help us learn about prayer, but here are some good tools for assisting in the work itself:

The Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6:9–13). When Jesus' disciples asked Him how to pray, He gave them an outline for prayer which must help us structure our own prayers. Who better to learn from than the Lord Himself? Here's what Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor martyred by the Nazis, had to say: "In response to the request of the disciples, Jesus gave them the Lord’s Prayer. Every prayer is contained in it. Whatever is included in the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer is prayed aright; whatever is not included is no prayer. All the prayers of Holy Scripture are summarized in the Lord’s Prayer, and are contained in its immeasurable breadth. They are not made superfluous by the Lord’s Prayer but constitute the inexhaustible richness of the Lord’s Prayer as the Lord’s Prayer is their summation. Luther says of the Psalter: “It penetrates the Lord’s Prayer and the Lord’s Prayer penetrates it, so that it is possible to understand one on the basis of the other and to bring them into joyful harmony.” Thus the Lord’s Prayer becomes the touchstone for whether we pray in the name of Jesus Christ or in our own name.…It is the prayer of the Christian church. It belongs to the Lord’s Prayer."

The Psalms

PrayerMate. Check out this cool smartphone/tablet app here. It's been immensely helpful to me in disciplining what I pray for and in giving myself to frequent prayer.

Take Words With You, by Tim Kerr. This book outlines a method for prayer, but it's really a reference for prayers in Scripture or commands to pray broken down into many different topics and themes.

Valley of Vision. A classic devotional collection of Puritan prayers.

A Method for Prayer, by Matthew Henry. Puritan Matthew Henry outlines a method for prayer and weaves together many passages of Scripture to help us pray how we ought and for what we ought. This is published as an online resource at matthewhenry.org.

Use Scripture to Pray

The child learns to speak because his father speaks to him. He learns the speech of his father. So we learn to speak to God because God has spoken to us and speaks to us. By means of the speech of the Father in heaven his children learn to speak with him. Repeating God’s own words after him, we begin to pray to him. We ought to speak to God and he wants to hear us, not in the false and confused speech of our heart, but in the clear and pure speech which God has spoken to us in Jesus Christ.

God’s speech in Jesus Christ meets us in the Holy Scriptures. If we wish to pray with confidenceand gladness, then the words of the Holy Scripture will have to be the solid basis of our prayer. For here we know that Jesus Christ, the Word of God, teaches us to pray. The words which come from God become, then, the steps on which we find our way to God. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Psalms: The Prayerbook of the Bible, "'Lord, Teach Us to Pray!'")